


polarized

by paladumb



Series: klance week 2017 [1]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Klance Week, Klance Week 2017, M/M, Near-Death Experience, Soulmate AU, the healing pods
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-17
Updated: 2018-01-11
Packaged: 2018-11-01 22:00:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,331
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10930890
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/paladumb/pseuds/paladumb
Summary: They’re like magnets. Keith is furious. The soulmark on his shoulder has been pulsing more than ever lately.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> For Klance Week 2017, day one - free will vs. fate. This has been done before - by literally everyone - but I love a good soulmate au. I couldn't resist.
> 
> TW for blood

Keith doesn’t know why he always ends up next to Lance.

But he _always ends up next to Lance_.

Meeting with Allura about a diplomatic mission to - “ _TO ALDERAAN!”_ Lance shouts pretty much directly into Keith’s right ear, and yup, he’s right there. Dinner? Lance is gabbing away to his right. They just fall together all the goddamn time - Keith might walk forward and Lance will stop him and then they don’t part for hours, or they pair together for a mission, Keith forging ahead and Lance running after him, muttering insults.

They’re like magnets. Keith is furious. The soulmark on his shoulder has been pulsing more than ever lately.

The night before they’re supposed to head out to a planet called Rwaf - the f pronounced like a t, and the w like an f, what the hell - Keith gets into bed and turns off his lights. He looks down and -

“Holy shit,” he says, hitting the lights again.

His shoulder is _glowing_.

He takes off his shirt and runs a hand over his soulmark. It’s beautiful, criss-crossing, intricate lines curling around his right shoulder and towards his collarbone and edging up his neck. It had stopped growing for a while, but it’s never been there before, not on that area of his neck.

It’s growing again. Why’s it growing again?

When he was little, it was just a dark little starburst on his shoulder, and as he grew in size, so did it - soulmark placements were supposed to mean something but he’d never really gotten involved in that mumbo-jumbo, as Lance would say. Well, Lance probably wouldn’t call soulmarks “mumbo-jumbo” because Lance _gushed_ about his soulmark. Keith’s pretty sure he hasn’t seen Lance’s soulmark yet, but he probably will at some point because Lance bats his eyelashes at Allura and mentions the fact that his soulmark has been pulsing “ _all the time”_ around her and that she might be _the light of his life_. Wink, wink.

Keith just wants to stab him, mostly.

But nevermind the fact that Allura’s entire right arm is fully jet black, all the way to the tips of her fingers, and in no way does that match Lance’s soulmark. Both his hands are his normal skin color. Apparently soulmarks are a universal thing.

Keith’s soulmark is practically ringing right now. He can hear a buzzing in his ears. “Why are you acting up?” he asks it, fully aware that that is a stupid thing to do and will yield no results. “What do you want?”

Keith doesn’t really believe in soulmarks or soulmates or fate. You choose your life. There’s no mystical energy field controls _his_ destiny.

* * *

The people populating Rwaf don’t really like them, and Lance ends up hauling Keith onto Blue as he bleeds from several stab wounds and from his mouth.

“Why are you bleeding from your mouth?” Lance shrieks at him as he dumps Keith to the left of his chair and sits, zooming away from the planet’s surface, Red following closely. “Did they stab your mouth? Did they cut out your tongue? Oh my God, did they cut off your tongue? Can you not talk anymore?”

“Cab still talk,” Keith says, and blood starts gushing from his nose. “Pudched a toothd.”

Lance hits the console. “Dammit, I was hoping to not have to hear your stupid voice anymore,” he says, and Keith laughs thickly from the ground.

“You bight dot have do,” he mumbles. “bight… ged rid of be.”

“Nope,” Lance says, pushing down on any feelings of terror at losing Keith that bubble up inside him. “There won’t be any getting rid of you. And honestly, Keith, don’t try to take my spot as drama queen of the Paladins. Wailing about being about to die is _my_ job.”

Keith slaps a hand against his leg and Lance can feel the jolt all the way up his bones, even through the armor. “You do a good job of id,” he says, and Lance almost smiles.

“Keep talking, _hermano_ ,” he says. “We’re almost back, and however much I don’t want to hear your voice in normal situations, I really should hear it now.”

Keith doesn’t say anything and Lance risks looking away for two seconds to check he’s still awake. He is, but his head is lolling like a bowling ball on the head of a pin, and his eyes are glazed as he looks out at the stars through Blue’s eyes.

“Keith,” Lance says warningly. “I’ll kick you if you don’t start talking.”

“You…” Keith says slowly. Lance knows he’s about to insult him, but he needs to keep him talking, so, magnanimously, he puts up with it. “You datter od… about dothig, but that isd’t a skill I possess. I dod’t doe what to talk about.”

It takes Lance a second to process that all of his _d’_ s are actually him trying to make _n_ ’s through his bloody nose, but once he figures that out, he decodes Keith’s statement and sticks his tongue out, even though he knows Keith can’t see him.

“Well, tell me about your soulmark,” Lance says. “You never talk about it. I don’t think anyone’s ever seen it.”

“I’b… private,” Keith mutters. “Is od by right shoulder. Really beautiful. Squigglies and lides bakid’ a patterd. Beed growig lately. Growig ad glowig.”

“Do you know who it is?” Lance asks quietly, his mind whirling as the castle comes into view. “We’re almost there.”

“Doe,” Keith says. “I dod’t believe in soulbates adyway. You should choose who you sped your life with.”

Lance pulls into his lion’s hangar and gets out of his chair to help Keith up. “Come on,” he says. “Get up.”

Keith lets himself be pulled to his feet and dragged away.

* * *

Lance stands in front of the healing pod, looking at Keith’s naked shoulder through the glass.

It’s his soulmark. Fucking of course it is. Keith Kogane, Lance’s ultimate rival, is his soulmate. It figures.

Whatever. Lance is going to prove to him that soulmates do exist. Lance is going to be the best soulmate _ever_. He is going to out-soulmate Keith Kogane, which shouldn’t be too hard, since Keith doesn’t believe in it anyway. Keith is going to fall so hard in love with him.

Lance takes his shirt off and looks at his soulmark, on his left shoulder, and then back at Keith’s. Keith’s right - both their soulmarks have been growing. Lance’s is glowing faintly silver, and inside the pod, Keith’s pulses with light as his wounds seal.

There’s a stillness to the air as the glass slides aside, Keith wobbling in place and then toppling forward.

Lance catches him easily and his breath stills in his throat as their soulmarks glow in unison and turn silver, crawling further along their skin like two synched up etch-a-sketches.

It’s gonna take some time. But Lance is gonna soulmate the _shit_ outta Keith Kogane.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lance soulmates the shit outta Keith. Keith isn't having any of it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> as i have been under fire in the comments for not writing a second chapter, here it is, a second chapter. i wrote this in like the span of one hour at like 2 AM so please forgive any errors 
> 
> also this was meant to just wrap things up and give my space bois a nice happy ending but lol no there'll be a third part at some point in the distant future and if that third part doesn't wrap things up please be sure to yell at me in the comments 
> 
> my main/aesthetic my fandom come talk to me i'm lonely

Keith is pouring himself a bowl of goo for his breakfast and minding his own _goddamn business_ when Lance dances by and tucks a long-stemmed flower behind his ear.

“Morning, baby,” he sings, pressing a kiss to Keith’s cheek. “How did you sleep?”

“Fine,” Keith says, almost jerking away as Lance scoops some sludge out of _his bowl_ and takes a big gulp.

“I’m glad to hear it!” Lance says. “I slept well too, although I woulda slept better if you were next to me.”

Keith rolls his eyes but doesn’t remove the flower from behind his ear. He doesn’t know where Lance finds them, and his bedside table is starting to get crowded with all the flowers Lance keeps giving him. “Sorry Lance, I sleep alone.”

Lance kicks his feet up on the table and Keith swats them off. “Sounds boring.”

“Afraid you’re just destined to have a boring soulmate, then,” Keith says, and chokes down the green goo.

(He is so fucking tired of green goo.)

“Someday you’ll love me just as much as I love you, Keithy,” Lance says, ruffling Keith’s hair as he stands. “It’s fate. It’s destiny. And baby - ” He bends down so that his face is right alongside Keith’s. The heat of his skin seeps into Keith and warms his bones. “I’d wait forever for you.”

He strides out of the room, leaving an empty silence in his wake.

That’s the problem, see-- it’s not that Keith doesn’t love Lance as much as Lance loves Keith. Keith just doesn’t show his love for anyone very well and despite the fact that Lance makes Keith’s heart spin and his head dance, (his heart dance and his head spin? See, this is the Lance effect _in action_ ) well, Keith just has problems with soulmates.

He stares at the wall in front of him, eating spoonfuls of the glop until Shiro enters with a quiet, “morning, Keith,” and a snort at the flower behind his ear.

Keith feels his face turning red, but he doesn’t remove the flower.

* * *

It’s been two months since Keith found out that Lance was his soulmate - or, rather, since they went to Rwaf and Keith got thrown into the healing pod and Lance put two and two together. In a rare display of tact, he’d taken Keith aside the next morning after he’d gotten out of the pod and explained it in a very Lance-ish way.

_“Hey, Keith, guess what.”_

_“I don’t really... want to guess anything? Why’d you drag me out here?”_

_“Because………………….. we’re soulmates!”_

_A silence, wherein Keith stared at Lance and everything fucking fit together. God fucking shit on a stick. He was goddamn right._

_“Great,” Keith said. “Can’t wait to spend the rest of my life with my soul bonded to yours.”_

_“You have no idea, Keithy boiiii,” Lance beamed. “Prepare to be romanced like you’ve never been romanced in your LIFE. I am going to bring my A GAME. This is what I’m GOOD at.”_

_Keith swallowed back the_ if this is what you’re good at, then how bad are you at everything else _that instinctively rose to his tongue and instead said, “Not everything needs to be a competition, Lance.”_

_Lance was already walking away. But backwards. He spread his hands. “And us being soulmates doesn’t need to change that competition, Keith. We’re competitors. It’s what we_ do _. We compete.”_

And the flowers had started appearing two days later. The only person to visit a planet in that time span had been Pidge, and Keith had been positive Lance didn’t even know about her visit.

But the flowers had only been the beginning. Post-it notes - or whatever the space equivalent of post-it notes were - had been appearing everywhere around the castle. All of them, addressed to Keith.

_Hey Keith! Bet your mullet’s looking REAL fine today_

_Keithy! Are you made up of dark matter? Because you’re indescribable_

_Roses are red / My lion is blue / All of me / Loves all of you_

Keith hated them. All of them. Whenever he saw one he took it down and kept it for safekeeping in a drawer under his bed. Because he hated them. (That last one, especially. He hadn’t stared at it on the wall next to his door for five minutes. He definitely hadn’t taken it down carefully and held it gently as he stepped inside. And there was no way he’d placed it inside the drawer and then rearranged all of the other post-it notes inside the drawer so that that one was front and center.)

And then there was the flirting. The absolute _incessant_ flirting. Keith wasn’t sure if Allura was more relieved that she wasn’t at the end of the flirting anymore, or more stressed because now she had to be privy to the flirting. Whatever Allura felt, Keith was pretty sure he had a good idea of what it was like to be her when Lance first started in on her.

But there were other moments too, that weren’t overtly annoying or cheesily romantic, that Keith couldn’t really make heads or tails of (and that he didn’t really want to). Sometimes during mission briefings Keith would start feeling antsy and he’d pace around the room and just finally come to a stop near Lance, and the anxiety would drain from him. Sometimes they’d all be hanging out and he’d feel a pair of eyes on him and look up to see Lance looking elsewhere or deep in conversation with Hunk. Sometimes they’d come back from a mission, sore and tired and he’d walk out of Red and just - look at Lance, with his hands on Blue’s giant muzzle, talking gently to his lion. And Keith might feel like something inside him was smiling, and maybe Lance would start to turn, and then Keith would turn away and pretend like he had already been walking away.

So, yeah, fine, Keith was definitely in love with Lance. Whatever. It didn’t matter.

* * *

A knock sounds at his door and Keith looks up from sharpening his knife. “Yeah,” he says, although from the way his soulmark’s poking at his insides, he knows exactly who it is.

Lance steps inside, another alien flower that Keith doesn’t recognize clenched in his hand. “What am I doing wrong?”

“Huh?”

Lance leans against the doorframe and the door closes with a quiet _snick_ behind him. “I don’t know what I’m doing wrong here. I don’t know how I can - make you feel - I don’t want to _make you feel_ anything. You just - we’re soulmates. Aren’t you supposed to - at least, like me? A little?”

Keith’s heart is breaking. Lance doesn’t understand. Lance shouldn’t have a soulmate like Keith; Keith doesn’t deserve him. “What are you trying to say?”

“I dunno, man, I’m trying to be honest, and like, communicate here, and holy moly is it difficult,” Lance gripes, and a smile twitches at the corners of Keith’s mouth. “But like, I talked to Hunk, and he said that a good relationship is all about communication, so here I am, communicating.” He blows out a big breath.

Keith stares down at his knife. He knows what he should say, what he wants to say. There’s a lot.

Lance opened himself up. He came to Keith and didn’t flirt and just wanted to talk. That’s - that’s brave. That’s more than Keith would ever have done. “Um,” Keith says. “Listen.”

“I am listening, yes,” Lance says. “That’s what I am doing.”

“I… I don’t - argh,” Keith says. “Idon’tbelieveinsoulmates.”

Lance screws up his mouth and frowns. “That’s - I mean, there’s incontrovertible proof, like, right there, on your shoulder.”

“Not - I know they exist,” Keith sighs, exasperated. “Duh. I can’t dispute the truth. But - having a soulmate. There’s pressure to like them. And like, what’s creating those feelings? Who’s in control here? Where did these stupid soulmarks come from anyway? How do they know who’s whose soulmate? How do I know that all these feelings I have for you aren’t made up by something that’s totally out of my power to control? I don’t like it. I don’t trust it.”

“You have feelings for me?” Lance asks, and Keith sighs. Of course that’s what he got out of it.

“That’s not the point,” he snaps, anger bubbling under his skin, but Lance sits down on the bed next to him, so that their soulmarks are right next to each other, and Keith feels like he’s iron and Lance is a magnet. Lance tucks the pink flower behind Keith’s ear.

“It totally is though,” Lance says. “Did you ever consider the fact that you woulda just had feelings for me anyway, and that the soulmark is just a manifestation of the strength of those feelings? See, nothing’s forcing you to do anything. But we both recognized that the bond existed, so it just naturally grew stronger, and now you’re hyper-focused on those feelings.” A flirtatious look crosses his face and he nudges Keith’s shoulder. A shock spikes through Keith from the point where their shoulders collide. “I believe it’s called the _honeymoon_ phase in an _actual_ relationship. The bond’s just trying to help it along.”

Keith stands abruptly and crosses to the other side of the room and leans against the wall. He folds his arms and it stretches the fabric of his t-shirt sleeves. Lance’s eyes go a little glassy watching him. “I still don’t like it.”

“The bond itself doesn’t have the power to create anything,” Lance says, standing. “I read a lot about soulmarks when mine first appeared.” His right hand comes up to trace the outline of the soulmark on his shoulder, and Keith’s not sure he even knows he’s doing it. “It just magnifies things. So whatever you’re feeling - it was always going to be there. Mark or no mark.”

Lance’s voice is soft but strong and Keith’s barely holding it together. It’s part of Lance that he doesn’t recognize from anything, from anywhere, and he’s suddenly confronting the fact that this side of Lance has always been there, this wise, caring, honest side, and he feels like he’s imploding.

Lance steps closer to him. “You kept the flowers,” he said.

Keith’s eyes flicker over to the bedside table, where the flowers Lance has given him from the past few weeks are sitting in a pile. The most recent one, lively, vibrant indigo, lies on top.

Keith doesn’t know what to say to that, so he doesn’t say anything.

“Okay,” Lance says eventually, and he straightens, his usual smirk falling back into place. “Well, baby, I’m just gonna keep being my awesome self. You just keep on hoarding your flowers and polishing your knives and I’ll be around just waiting on you, honey.” He sweeps his right arm around and hits his knuckles on the doorframe and immediately wails in pain. “Ow!! Ouch, ouch, ouch-”

Keith starts laughing then, at that, and Lance looks up, mock horror and shock on his face, massaging the hand he hit. “Well, asshole, I’m glad that my pain is _funny_ to you,” he snaps, but there’s no malice behind it, and he starts to grin. “I’m _going._ To _my_ room. The one that doesn’t _fight back against my dramatic touch to life_.”

Keith laughs so hard he slides down to the floor, and when he tilts his head up, trying to catch his breath, he sees Lance smiling at him with this funny look on his face. And Keith sort of recognizes it because it’s the same way he looks at Lance sometimes.

And then Lance turns and walks out, and all the air leaves the room.

 


	3. the lucky shot

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Just pick up a gun, shoot it, and at some point, you're bound to get in a lucky shot."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> here you go! for context, i wrote this in the span of an hour at 2 AM, but THIS time i listened to the voltron soundtrack on repeat while I did. I think it actually turned out better because of it.
> 
> tw: watch out for some nasty language from keith's crusty dad, and also some handling of firearms in the first half

Keith doesn’t have any memories of his mother. She and his father were not soulmates. In fact, Keith wasn’t even sure his father had _had_ a soulmate. He wasn’t sure who could have put up with that disaster for any longer than they’d had to. And Keith should know. Keith had to put up with that absolute _fucking_ disaster for way too long.

Whenever somebody asked him about his father, Keith always just flashed back to a simpler time: on a farm, in Texas, his father trying to teach him to shoot a rifle. He wasn’t good at it, but Little Keith was a scrappy street fighter and his father wanted him to know that a gun was a good weapon to bring to a knife fight.

Keith, who had been ten at the time, had still not hit a single can after two hours of aiming and firing and clearing his ears of the massive BANG. “I don’t want to do this,” he snapped, throwing the gun on the ground.

“You’ll get it,” his father said, although his voice sounded like someone was sawing on his vocal chords. “You’ll get it. Just - pick up - pick - ” Keith had started walking back to the house. “Keith, get back here. Keith! Pick up the fucking gun and - ”

“I’m fine without a fucking gun, Dad,” Keith snapped. “I don’t gotta have a gun.”

His father sighed and reached out to Keith, grabbing his shoulder and turning him around. “Listen, son,” he said. “My old man had this saying, and it went like so: You’ve just gotta grab life by the tits and give it a great big milking.”

Keith was abjectly horrified.

“It means you’ve just gotta pick up that gun and get to shooting,” his father said. “You’ll get in a lucky shot at some point, even if you never make another shot for the rest of your life.”

So yeah, Keith’s father sucked massive balls. But that lesson - just pick up the gun, shoot it, and at some point, you’re bound to get in a lucky shot - has stuck with him for his entire life. It’s just - _Lance_ -

Lance is the opposite of a lucky shot. Well, Keith supposes, he’s (fuck this) _one-in-a-million_ , his soulmate, the team’s incredible sharpshooter, but Lance is just so The Opposite Of Keith and his stupid attack-whatever-moves strategy. Lance _strategizes_. He picks up his gun and thinks, and breathes, and aims, and every shot is a lucky shot. Every shot hits a can.

But like it or not, Keith is consciously adapting a strategy to fix this, and that strategy is to pick up the gun, shoot it, and hope that he gets in a lucky shot.

He stops outside Lance’s door first, hoping to find Lance in his room, but it’s all dark, and Lance isn’t in his bed, so Keith walks out, the doors hissing closed behind him.

He checks the kitchen, but Lance isn’t there. His soulmark is pounding. It’s literally glowing _through_ his t-shirt. It knows something’s up.

“Calm the fuck down,” Keith says to it. “You know what I’m about to do. Fuck off.”

His soulmark does not say a single word back.

“Useless shit,” Keith grumbles, and sets off for the observation room.

And of course Lance is there, sitting in his PJs on the massive windowsill, staring into the stars slowly passing by. His hair is a mess between curly and straight, and part of a face mask is caked on the side of his face, near his hairline. Keith’s heart is beating out of his chest, and suddenly, Lance looks up, like he knows Keith’s there.

“Hey, man,” Lance says quietly, trying to unobtrusively run his fingers through his hair and straighten it out. “What’s up?”

Keith nods to the windowsill. “Can I - can I sit?”

“‘Course,” Lance says, pulling his knees closer to him. “What brings you to my humble abode?” He makes a sweeping gesture at the stars and smiles at Keith. Keith just feels himself smiling back. It’s like he can’t _not_.

Keith folds himself in front of Lance, with his knees tucked up under him, and unfolds a slightly crumpled piece of paper from his pocket. “I wanted to give you this.”

Lance takes it from him, frowning slightly. When he realizes what it is, his cheeks dust pink. “Is this… one of my post-it notes to you?”

Keith blushes. The note that Lance wrote says, _There’s no gravity in space, but I’m still falling for you._ “Uh - I - there’s - look on the back.”

Lance turns it around, and reads it, and then reads it again. And then he looks at Keith, and looks down at the note, and reads it again, and then looks at Keith.

“Wha - Ke - you - is this - a - did y - ” he says, and stares at the note again. Keith can’t help himself, and he laughs, covering his hand with his mouth.

Nope, that’s the wrong way around. Whatever. Lance is looking at him like Keith’s the stars outside. That’s what matters. And now he’s scrambling forward, the note on the floor, and cradling Keith’s face in his hands. Keith may or may not lean into it a little bit. “You--!!!” he says, and his eyes gleam like the crystals of the Balmera. “Are you serious? Do you mean it?”

And Keith can feel his face heating up underneath Lance’s smooth palms, but he’s smiling bigger than he’s ever smiled in his life, and he nods, and Lance just melts, settling down in front of him. Keith’s hands pick their way to his lower back, and he interlocks his fingers there. Lance strokes a thumb across Keith’s cheekbone.

“I really, really want to kiss you,” he says, and Keith is _helpless_.

“It was just a little-!” he tries, but Lance lunges forward and kisses the tip of his nose.

“Please,” he says. “You _know_ pick-up lines are all I have in this life. Just -- ”

Keith rests his forehead against Lance’s. It cuts him off mid-sentence and the air between them braids like fire. “Well, now you have me, too.”

Lance makes a little choked-up sound, and presses his lips to Keith’s.

It’s so soft, and so gentle, and Keith feels like starlight and the blue of luminescent sea creatures and the glow of embers in a fireplace at one in the morning. Lance feels like light against Keith’s skin and his lips, and Keith smiles into the kiss and then Lance is smiling, and when they part, it doesn’t feel like they’ve gotten farther apart at all.

“Wow,” Lance says. His eyes gleam and Keith just instinctively moves toward him again, laying a tiny kiss onto the corner of his mouth.

“Lance,” he says, Lance sighs and wraps his arms fully around Keith, pulling him close, and Keith goes willingly.

“Keith,” Lance murmurs, and he doesn’t need to say anything else.

Keith glances down at the post-it note on the floor. From here, he can barely read what it says, but he already knows. He mulled over those words a thousand times before writing them down.

They’ve got a long way ahead of them. But Keith trusts Lance. And before he jumps in for his lucky shot, he knows Lance will be there to steady his hands.

//

_hey, lance, are you a knife, because I want to keep you close to me and not give you up_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> was this out of character? probably. do i care? not at all
> 
> thanks so much to everyone who's supported me!! i love all of you! visit me on tumblr [main](http://gravitvs.tumblr.com) || [mostly voltron](http://paladumb.tumblr.com)

**Author's Note:**

> might write a second chapter to this about lance trying to be the best soulmate ever who knows
> 
> love me some good star wars references
> 
> anyway, I hope you enjoyed! find me on [tumblr](http://paladumb.tumblr.com)


End file.
